JoshC.

The storms have given us an accidental sneak peek of Rookburgh:

Another post with the hashtag and some blurry editing

Looks like a neat little ride. Cars do look a little cramped but make sense for a family ride system I think. Agree that the Garmendale guy wasn't exactly a natural on the camera so didn't come across as a 'everything has been plain sailing' kind of guy. Nothing wrong with that though of course.

I think you're overestimating the influence fans have here. Thorpe (and any park really) aren't going to rush a big new investment because fans (which make up less than 1% of visitors) are "pressuring" them. In this sense, fan opinion really means nothing: they'll add a new coaster when they want to. They won't do that until they replace them. Sad fact, but true. tbh, Loggers doesn't even need removing for the sake of removing really. You can hardly see these days. I'd rather them invest the time, money and effort into something else. And anyways, the only thing I can see replacing Loggers is a roller coaster, since they wouldn't be able to open a new log flume there. Slammer is easier to replace, but since Merlin rarely seem to invest in flat rides - and there's a very small list of suitable flat rides for Thorpe - it's hard to see what they could replace that plot with. I think it's more realistic to expect a coaster to go there and in the surrounding area than a new flat ride, for example. So really, the bigger issue here is Merlin's "risk free" strategy. They won't invest unless they feel basically certain they can make some money from said investment. If this is true, then just..wow. Wickerman bought a noticeable increase in numbers. The brand is reasonably strong and I've seen quite a few people with related-merch. It's a slow burner of an attraction too; it had the instant hit, and it'll also have to repeat value of people coming back to it in years to come. If everything that Wickerman has done for the park hasn't led Merlin to say it's been a financial success, then maybe, just maybe, they're setting the bar too high.

I'm fairly certain that's from a few years ago - it certainly used to be painted that vibrantly in the past! Nice find though; the Tidal Wave photos are particularly interesting

You can say exactly the same thing about Thorpe and Experiment 10 (isolation cells). Towers and Sub Species (complete split ups). Twisted Attractions and Ward 78 (a mainstream attraction designed to be entered alone). The list goes on. This isn't to put down what Tulleys have done. They've been innovative. But so have plenty of other places. And of some of the innovations, sticking a bag on people's heads isn't exactly the best if we're being honest. Sometimes it's about knowing to not mess around with crazy ideas though! Most theme parks wouldn't mess around with a crazy idea like Derren Brown's Ghost Train - doesn't mean Thorpe are up there as one of the best. Wastelands is great. It was probably my favourite UK maze last year. And the area itself is on a ridiculous scale. The maze itself is a well done experience, I'm not poo-pooing on that. But when you bring it to basics, it's a maze which does very standard things very well. That's not a bad thing (in fact it's a very good thing!), but it's still run of the mill when it comes down to it: you walk through a route and actors jump out. It's comparable to Big Top imo - no special features or fancy bells and whistles, just taking the standard idea of a scare maze and doing everything right. Certainly true. Not disagreeing there. But last year Tulleys had 7 attractions that followed this exact same formulaic approach, 2 that didn't and a show. For me, 7 mazes that follow the same formula - many of which have similar enough styles that it can be hard to distinguish them for some - puts them behind other events.

It's possible they just copied and pasted the same text across all the same social media platforms and the capitalized letters mean nothing. If the letters which are, or are not, in capital letters mean anything, I'm almost certain that we won't be able to figure out what they mean until after an announcement is made. Even then, I doubt they mean anything anyways.

I hate to disappoint you, but there will be no 'ride' this year. Let alone a major investment. Your letter is almost 3 years old. At that point, Merlin were considering a major investment for Thorpe (most likely a roller coaster). But plans can and do change. This is one of those times when they have - things have changed. There's a hundred possible reasons why, but it's not happening. I'm sure you can even look to last year. Do you think when Nick wrote that letter in 2017, the plan for 2019 was always going to be 'a gaming expo, a bouncy castle and a weird escape room'? Definitely not. The final evidence is that Thorpe require planning permission for almost anything they add. A major ride definitely would. We would have seen plans by now, and we'd have almost definitely seen some form of construction work now. It's nice you got a lengthy response, and free tickets, but most of the details there are simply generic responses with lots of buzzwords to make everything sound as exciting as possible.

There's 3 certainties in the theme park world: -Merlin will invest in IP attractions -Energylandia will build a crazy amount of roller coasters ridiculously quickly -Wonderland Eurasia was never going to work Less than 11 months since its official opening, Wonderland Eurasia / Ankapark has closed, because it cannot afford to pay its staff: https://www.news1.news/2020/02/750-million-dollars-spent-ankapark-closed-2.html Some of the rides built never actually opened. There were rumours this was some form of money laundering scheme. It seemed like a disaster from day 0. And it was.

That Thorpe should probably upgrade their computers if it's taken them 4 months to initialise this system...

*blows dust off topic*

Yes, because the engineers are the ones filming, editing and uploading the videos to social media, instead of, yknow, the marketing department?

The park clearly love that that thing after the second launch, as that's all they're posting...

Innovative? Yes. But not successfully. Sure, Hellements is one of the better versions of a hooded maze, but it's still weak. Volt lasted one(?) year. Wastelands uses an idea which has been present in mainstream mazes for over 10 years now. I'm not saying they have tried to be innovative or have some differences. But aside from Hayride and Vixi, their mazes are very standard, run of the mill attractions. Some are done well and have cool features. But that's not enough to put them in contention with some of the best Halloween events in Europe...in my opinion at least!

Think about this logically. They are adding an 11th attraction. They added a new attraction last year which saw them expand the overall size of the site. If they were looking at reducing costs, they wouldn't be doing that. They're not going to cutback live entertainment. Biggest, they still have a way to go to hit Movie Park Germany's 17 advertised Halloween attractions (even if it's a stretch to call some of them Halloween attractions). Best is obviously subjective, but they're a long way off being up there with the best in Europe imo. There's only so much you can do with 'long maze where actors jump out at points throughout' concept.

They seem to be much more erratic than last season when it comes to uploading them. The length of time between uploads doesn't necessarily mean they have stopped.

I believe at one point they were considering just giving you 11 slots/'tickets', and you could use them for whatever attractions you wanted. So, if you wanted to do all 11 attractions once, you could, but equally you could do 1 attraction 11 times. I guess in the grand scheme of things, 11 attractions is still a lot to do in the time frame, so making them unlimited doesn't make much difference. One of the reasons for them trying this different method is because of the expansion of the event. This year will have 11 attractions. And many of them aren't exactly short either (eg Wreckoning being a 2.5hr walk through*). How many people who went last year did all 10 attractions without using a Fastrack? Very few I imagine. I did, and it was a route march of an event: one to the other, to the other, with not much time to just wander. You had to plan things well and get just a little bit lucky. Those who aren't prepared for that will almost definitely not have done every single attraction. If the place marketed 'one price, 11 attractions', there would be an increase in people feeling short changed 'because they didn't do everything'. This is especially true when you are having your ticket ticked off every time you do an attraction. Market it as unlimited attractions, choose from 11 makes it feel a bit friendlier. People will come away with a "Oh, we could do as many as we wanted, and we did 9 of them - it was great!" mentality rather than a "We only did 9 out of 11 attraction we could have done". Obviously there will still be people who feel short changed and there will still be complaints. But this certainly minimises it. I'm sure they've thought through the queueing aspect and all of that (personally, I doubt this will not make much difference to queue times since they never did time slots). Their Fastrack system works, so no problems there either. And if it doesn't work, they can revert back to their usual system next year. At some point, though, you have to wonder if Tulleys are expanding too much. Should an 11th attraction have been a priority now? Arguably not. *possible underestimate

Current progress: And a couple of nice overview shots: From centre(ish) of the park, looking towards the new developments From near where Abyssus is, looking across what was the whole park in 2018. All images from here: https://www.facebook.com/Drone-Vision-Marker-Grafik-102765977827368/

ANPR is an interesting idea for sure. I don't know of any other parks that use ANPR (though feel free to correct me). So it makes you wonder why no park has, given the technology has been around for a while. Is it simply because no other park has felt the need to? The cost generally? The big issue I see is that when people visit a theme park, they become stupid. Can you clearly explain the ANPR system and how to pay for parking to stupid theme park guests who have lost all common sense? I guess we'll see. I mean if it works, great. But if it doesn't, it's just another costly experiment that's failed, and will annoy people even more when people have to park on dodgy gravel plots (which I know the park can't do anything about).

If you look at the entrance of the corkscrew (bottom middle of picture), you can see they're now starting to paint the track grey (sorry @Mark9)

I'd take Towers 2010 marketing over Thorpe 2019 marketing tbf

In conjunction with the park, Aroma Prime have released the same smells used in some of the Fright Nights attractions.

Thorpe's food prices are hardly cheap for the quality of the food on offer. Some places are okay, but most aren't. In terms of pure price, it's about in line for what I'd expect from a theme park though tbf. Doesn't make it right though.

Another look at that drop thing: The trim is also on the standard Shockwave model, so presumably something Vekoma have taken into account when designing it. May also act as a way of creating a very slow, near-holding, drop akin to what we're seeing on the top hats of Pantheon and Asterix's 2022 Intamin..

It really struck me that even if you didn't fork out for the mazes you could still enjoy the event (whether you liked scares or not). The zones provided enough variety that there was something for everyone. I've heard really mixed things about the mazes. From others who have done the event, many seem to rate Psychoshock as the weakest / 2nd weakest, but ones like Villa and Haunted Holidays as the best. For those normal mazes it's nice to see a spread at least as it would suggest they're all of equal quality. The quality between Clinic and Below is incredible though, and certainly justifies the couple of extra €s. Belgium's event is the next big one on my list (2021, because Intamin too). They seem to have toned down over the past few years, but last year's new headliner there seemed to be a push back to their well-known intense roots.